Delicately rigged: Les Wilson Barramundi Discovery Centre

Responding to the booming recreational fishing industry, Bud Brannigan Architects’ building for a fish hatchery and interpretation centre in Karumba, Queensland is a poetic and uncompromising celebration of the town’s industrial legacy.

Nine hours west of Cairns, on the edge of the Gulf of Carpentaria (GoC), the town of Karumba sits at the mouth of the Norman River. The red, salt-encrusted coastline here is cracked with fissures draining the Cape York wetlands into the sea, appearing from the air like a microscopic cross-section of sweaty skin. The delta landscape is a paradise for fish and fishers alike.

A resident population of just over 500 endures the forty-degree days of summer, while in the dry season the shacks, camp sites and caravan parks swell to accommodate 3,000 visitors a week. Most are here for barramundi season. From March to October, the iconic barra is fought, caught, battered, crumbed, grilled and served with local prawns or mudcrab.

Robert O’Hara Burke and William John Wills, the original backpackers, arrived in the area during their 1860–61 expedition to cross the Australian continent. Failing to spot the ocean through the dense mangrove swampland, they gave up and turned south, missing the opportunity to catch a southern GoC barramundi. We arrive on the postal run – one plane in and out, twice a week. A selection of port infrastructure serves the town’s other industries of zinc ore and cattle, which are exported from here into Asia.

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